Chapter 21: Friday Morning

I was sitting on a chair. My pyjama pants were firmly on. There was a bathrobe wrapped tightly around me but my arms weren’t through the sleeves, so I was completely wrapped inside the robe. My body was trembling like it was the aftermath of some distant earthquake.

A face swam into view. It was a face I didn’t want to see, so I swung away from it. The chair swung under me and I spun.

I stopped spinning and there was my friend Cindi. She lay on her bed and looked at me with her big, sad eyes. She seemed happy to see me. I wondered how she could seem so casual about lying there with no clothes on. For me, being naked left me shaking and frightened.

“I’m sorry!” I whispered to her.

“What are you sorry for?” she asked, but her voice was strange. It was deep somehow. It sounded almost like a man’s voice.

“I didn’t know they made you do that. I didn’t know you were a prisoner.”

There was silence for a moment. “Who are you talking to?” she said in that same deep voice.

“You!” I reached out to touch her, but a glass wall got in the way. Maybe that’s why her voice sounded funny.

“I’d rescue you if I could, but I don’t know how to get to you.”

“Bec?” She sounded confused. She lay there, with her mouth open like she didn’t know what to say. She lay there, looking at me like she didn’t understand.

“Then maybe you could be my friend. I would like that,” I whispered.

“Bec! Listen to me! You have to stop this.”

“I’m listening, Cindi.” I leaned forwards and put my forehead against the glass wall. “I’m listening, Cindi. What do I have to stop?”

There was silence for a moment. Then I figured she might want me to stop talking to her. I couldn’t let her tell me that. She was about to say something but I got in first.

“Maybe we could run away together.”

Whatever she’d been about to say disappeared into the silence.

“We could find somewhere to live. We could look after each other.”

“Bec, why do you want to run away?”

“I can’t stay here. He hates me.” I felt a single tear trickle down my left cheek.

“What?”

“He hates me. He thinks I’m ugly.”

“What?”

Something moved the chair I was sitting in. Tried to turn it. Tried to take me away from Cindi. I grabbed whatever was in front of me and held on tight. “Nooo!!”

I screamed and fought. Holding on tight. “Noooo!!”

Then it all stopped. As suddenly as it started, it all stopped. I was left alone. I had my face pressed to the glass and I cried for Cindi. She lay on the bed and said “Shhhhh.”

I guess I shhhhed.

“What’s happening?” Cindi asked. But her voice had changed. Now it wasn’t so deep. It was more like a girl’s voice, but older, more like a woman’s voice.

“They tried to take me away from you.”

There was some quiet noise going on. It sounded like “Psspssswhspsssh.” It was almost like two people were whispering, but that didn’t make sense because there was only Cindi and me, and Cindi wasn’t saying anything and I wasn’t saying anything but still there was “Psspsswhspsssh.”

Cindi lay there with her mouth open, gasping for breath. I could hear her rough breathing through the glass.

“They tried to take me away from you, but I wouldn’t let them.”

“Bec, can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you. But your voice is different through the glass. You sound like ... you sound like my mother.”

“I should hope so.” That was a weird thing for her to say. It didn’t make much sense at all.

Cindi lay there on her bed, her mouth wide open in fear.

“Don’t be afraid, Cindi. I’m right here. I’ll come for you. Then we can go away together.”

“Why do you want to go away?”

“I told you. I can’t stay here. He thinks I’m ugly. He hates me. I can’t stay here.”

“Who thinks you’re ugly?”

I closed my eyes and pressed my face to the glass. I couldn’t say his name.

“Why do you think he hates you?”

“Because I ... I tried to be like you. You’re so brave. I took off ... I took off my clothes and I let him...”

“You let him touch you?” Cindi’s voice had gone all hard and cold.

“No!” I gasped. I was shocked at what she was thinking. “I let him look though ... I let him look at me.”

I had my arms clutched tight around my stomach. I was rocking back and forth in the chair. I really, really didn’t want to talk about this, but Cindi was making me say it.

“Bec, I...” Her deep voice was back again, but what she was saying cut off suddenly.

Next time she spoke, she was back to her woman’s voice. That was really confusing. I couldn’t work out why that happened.

“And what made you think he didn’t like what he saw?”

Did she really need me to say this? I wasn’t sure if I could. I forced my voice out, but it came out so quiet – barely a whisper.

“I could see his ... thing.”

“His penis?”

“Yes ... and it should have been ... if he thought I was pretty ... if he liked looking at me ... it should have gone all...”

“He was looking at you, and he didn’t get an erection. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes!” It was more like breathing out than a word.

“Oh, sweetie!”

Something touched the side of my face. It came out of nowhere. I was so surprised I jerked away from it and hit my nose on the glass. It hurt. “Ow!”

It was like a switch got flipped. Suddenly things that had been confusing made sense. Suddenly things that had been making perfect sense seemed ... crazy.

I sat in Dan’s computer chair with my arms wrapped around myself, squeezing tight. I couldn’t look at the computer screen with the picture of Cindi. I couldn’t look at Mum. I definitely couldn’t look at Dan. I tipped my head forward so my hair covered my face and closed my eyes.

Oh God! What’s happening to me?

“Psspssswhspsssh.” Dan and Mum were whispering to each other again. I didn’t care. Some things hadn’t changed. The things I’d been saying to Cindi were still true. Even if I had been saying them to a picture. Stupid brain!!

“Sweetie, a boy doesn’t always get an erection when they see...” Mum had gone into lecture mode, but she sounded uncertain for some reason.

“If they’re feeling scared, or confused, or embarrassed or even really cold then sometimes it doesn’t ... perform. So for example, if his mother had just been in his room yelling at him for looking at dirty pictures...”

Okay, so that caused a completely different switch to flip. My brain wasn’t completely incapable of thinking. Once she had said that much then I could work out the rest.

Suddenly a whole lot more things made sense. Why hadn’t I known that? Why hadn’t I figured it out? I felt so completely and utterly stupid. I’d had a total freak-out and it was all over nothing.

Stupid Bec! Stupid brain! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“If a boy’s looking at a naked girl and he doesn’t get an erection, that doesn’t automatically mean...”

“Mum, you can stop now. I get it.”

She stopped. I think she was glad to stop.

I still couldn’t look at anyone. I kept my head down. I kept my eyes closed. I was feeling a lot of sympathy for those ostriches that stick their head in the sand so they can’t see anything they don’t want to see. Right then the list of things I didn’t want to see included the whole world.

“So you don’t think I’m ugly?”

Since I wasn’t looking at either of them, Dan must have figured out for himself that I was talking to him now. “No, I don’t think you’re ugly. You look amazing. Every day you get prettier and prettier.”

“And you don’t hate me?”

“I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. I’ve loved you ever since you were born. I’ve loved you ever since the first time Mum let me hold you, that day in the hospital.”

I nodded under my curtain of hair. I flashed to the day Angie was born and Mum put her into my arms. I could relate to what he was saying.

“I’m feeling really stupid right now.”

“You don’t need to feel stupid.” That was Mum. “You were a bit confused for a time, that’s all.”

I felt her hand stroking down my back. I was pretty sure it was Mum’s hand.

“I think I was a lot confused. I thought I was talking to Cindi, but it was you all the time, wasn’t it?”

That time I was meaning both of them.

I figured I was being a bit vague in who I was talking to. I wondered why, but then I worked it out. You is a second person pronoun. It’s both singular and plural. Sometimes it isn’t clear from what you’re saying as to whether you mean singular or plural. Some people here in my adopted country got it right when they invented that new word, yall. I don’t know how it should be written, maybe with an apostrophe. There are people here in America who say things like Y’all should listen up now. It might be bad English, but it’s a lot less confusing.

It’s weird what people think about when they’re sitting on a chair after stripping themselves naked in front of their brother, having a complete freak-out and then having a total brain-spaz that made talking to a computer screen seem normal. Me, I ended up thinking about second person pronouns. I wondered if there was a club of people who’d had the same experience. We could get together and discuss who thought about the weirdest thing. I wondered if I’d win the prize.

“Don’t worry about that now. It happened and now it’s over,” said Mum.

The chair under me was turned so I was facing out into the room. I still had my head tipped right forward. I wasn’t ready to look at anyone. I reached up inside the robe and held the edges together. I didn’t want it falling open and exposing my naked chest to Dan and Mum. I figured I’d had enough of being naked for this lifetime – and maybe the next one as well.

I stood up out of the chair, hoping to escape from the room, and found myself enclosed in two sets of arms. I sighed and stood there, letting myself be hugged. The tighter they hugged me, the better I felt. I was the meat in a Bec sandwich and I guess it was not such a bad place to be.

“Mum, I think I need to see a doctor. I don’t think my brain is working right.”

“Okay sweetie,” she replied. “I’ll try and get appointments with Dr Koehler and Dr Koehler. They’ve been my doctors since we moved out here. Dr Koehler Jnr is a neurologist. That means she specializes in brains that don’t work right – the actual physical brain that is. Dr Koehler Snr is a psychiatrist. I suppose that means he specializes in brains that don’t work right, too.”

For some reason, the way she said that made me giggle.

“We might have to wait a bit before you can see either of them though. Dr Koehler Snr runs the psychiatric ward at the hospital so he’s a very busy man. But he specialises in children and he’s interested in Lambrecht’s so I’m sure he’ll want to see you. His daughter is busy too. Dr Koehler Jnr sees a lot of other people with brains that don’t work right.”

I had a mental image of a woman in a lab coat with lots of mutated brains lined up on a bench in front of her and started giggling uncontrollably.

Fingers started tickling me down my sides and in my armpits and everywhere that I was sensitive. Two adults tickling one thirteen year-old is hardly fair – especially since I could hardly protect myself because my arms were trapped inside my robe and my hands were busy holding the robe closed. I wriggled and jerked wildly, trying to get away from those remorseless tickling fingers.

Soon my giggles turned to squeals. Then my squeals turned to shrieks. Then my shrieks turned to frantic calls to let me go, because I had to pee. I broke free and fled out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom, one hand pressed frantically between my legs.

I sat on the toilet and looked miserably at my drenched panties, now lying loosely around my ankles. I hadn’t made it to the bathroom in time. Damn it! Is there anything less dignified for someone who’s practically a teenager than to wet her pants like a little girl? What else can go wrong today? I haven’t even made it to breakfast yet.

I kicked my pyjama pants and panties off my ankles in frustration and let them fall in the middle of the bathroom floor. There was a big wet patch around the crotch of the pyjama pants too. I frantically prayed that Mum and Dan hadn’t seen that. If they had, my humiliation would be complete.

If they hadn’t seen anything, maybe, just maybe, I could pretend it never happened. I was wearing the bath robe. Maybe that covered up my shameful secret? I groaned in dismay. The thought of them seeing me wet my pants made me want to lock the door of the bathroom and hide in here until they went away. Like that would ever happen. They would set up camp outside the door until I died of old age. Or more likely, they would take the door away and come in and get me.

I looked towards the door and froze in terror. The door was open. In my frantic rush, I’d pushed it closed behind me, but it had obviously bounced back open instead of shutting properly.

I was sitting on the toilet, practically naked, peeing, with the door open. And Angie was standing in the doorway, staring at me curiously. Oh God!!

Part of my brain was saying it could have been worse. It could have been Mum, or Tara, or even ... Dan!

I stared at Angie, trying to figure out how to get her to leave and close the door. Nothing I could say was going to get her to do that. She stared at me with her endless fascination about people using toilets. What is it with three year-olds and toilets?

I was finished with peeing, but I was feeling weird about cleaning myself in front of Angie. I leaned forward and put my head on my knees. I shut my eyes and hoped the world would go away.

I could hear Dan’s voice talking to Mum, down the hallway in his room. They were talking quietly, but in the silence of the house, their words carried clearly down the hallway.

“Well! That was a bit scary!” said Dan.

“Yes it was! Fortunately she came out of it fairly quickly,” said Mum.

“Is it finished? Or is that going to keep happening?” asked Dan.

“I don’t know, honey. I hope not. The sooner we get her in to see one or the other of my Doctors, the better. I doubt if I’ll get any appointments for today. I’ll keep her at home today and try for early next week.”

“Tickling as therapy – was that something your doctors taught you?” asked Dan.

“No, I made that up on the spot. It seemed like the right thing to do,” said Mum.

“It certainly got her out of her funk pretty quickly. Maybe we should try that on you next time you go psycho on us,” said Dan.

“No thanks. I’m too old to be tickled so hard I pee my pants. Speaking of which, we can’t ever let her know that we saw she’d wet herself.”

Damn! I groaned silently to myself. Sometimes being sneaky and listening to conversations backfires. Now I knew they knew. That made it harder to pretend nothing happened. Locking myself in the bathroom and staying in here until I’m seventy just became a good option.

I could hear Dan sigh, “Yeah, she would hate for us to know that – especially me – especially now.”

“I’m still trusting you to do the right thing, Dan. That little girl needs a big brother right now a whole lot more than she needs an illicit boyfriend.”

“I know that, Mum. You don’t have to worry, I swear it. But, damn it Mum, she jumps back and forth between being a little girl and a woman so fast it makes my head spin.”

“If it gets too difficult to keep her off you while you’re living here, then maybe it would be better if you moved out. We’ll get you an apartment out near the college. Your dad and I will find the money somehow.”

The world stopped.

Time froze.

I stopped.

They were going to send Dan away.

Because of me!

Because I got stupid and took my clothes off in front of Dan.

Why did I do that?

Of all the questions in my head, that was the one I had the least idea how to answer.

My shoulder was being touched by a very tiny hand. Somehow I remembered how to breathe. My heart re-started itself with a huge thump. I rolled my head to the side, opened one eye and peeked. Angie was standing right beside me with a little frown on her face.

“Wanna go potty,” she whispered.